Primary care Management of lower Urinary tract Symptoms in men; Development and validation of a diagnostic and clinical decision support tool.

Background

Bothersome Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (LUTS) can affect quality of life.  These symptoms may include getting up at night frequently to pass urine, needing to go in a hurry, a poor stream, or sometimes incontinence.  Men are often referred to urology specialists who often recommend treatments that could have been initiated in primary care if GPs had access to better diagnostic tools.
Access to simple, accurate tests, diagnostic protocols and decision aids are needed to facilitate patient management in primary care.

Study Aims

The PriMUS study will develop a diagnostic aid based on symptoms, signs, patient characteristics and primary care based clinical tests that can indicate likely urodynamic diagnosis, which is the current ’gold standard’ test used to predict cause of LUTS in secondary care. This will help GPs to provide more accurate treatment and management decisions for LUTS.

Recruitment

Recruitment Target = 880 males from three hubs across England and Wales.

Participants will undergo a series of simple index tests and the urodynamics test, within a few weeks of seeing their GP.
The results of these tests will be incorporated into the decision aid.

The PriMUS study follows the National Standards for Public Involvement and is supported by an NIHR Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) representative. More on the National Standards for Public Involvement can be found: